France’s declining power in Africa faces its biggest problem in decades

In decades, France’s biggest threat to Africa has been that allies like Chad and Senegal are trying to redefine sovereignty and break with France.

Key partners are pulling away from Paris and trying to rethink their authority, which is the biggest threat to France’s long-standing power in Africa in decades.

This change comes as France is working on a new defense plan to lower the number of troops it keeps on the continent.

On its Independence Day, Chad, which was seen as France’s most steady and reliable partner in Africa, said it was stopping military cooperation to reaffirm its independence.

This was a double hit. At the same time, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Senegal’s new president, said it was “obvious” that French troops would soon leave Senegalese land.

• “The fact that the French have been here since the time of slavery doesn’t mean that it can’t be done differently,” Faye told Le Monde.

At the same time as this announcement, France was trying to regain some of its lost power. Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot visited Chad and Ethiopia, and President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that the French Army killed up to 400 soldiers in West Africa in 1944.

• A top expert at Verisk Maplecroft called Chad’s choice “the final nail in the coffin of France’s post-colonial military dominance in the whole Sahel region.”

Analysts say that Senegal and Chad’s choices are part of a larger shift in how the region interacts with France, where Paris’s military and political power keeps decreasing.

In the past few years, military-led governments have gotten rid of French troops in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, where locals became angry because of persistent Islamic terrorist insurgencies.

France wants to decrease its military influence but also increase its business position in English-speaking countries like Nigeria.

It is also looking into new ways to work together, like offering specialized training and short-term missions.